4 Packaging Obstacles To Overcome In Your Business

Packaging is often an underestimated marketing-tool, and is further neglected by those who do not maximise every point of customer interaction. Moving towards the year of 2017, the efforts towards secondary packaging has now rightfully become a top-of-mind topic for customer-savvy professionals.

To help in your voyage to delivering an augmented and enhanced packaging experience for your business, we will briefly evaluate the 5 Packaging Obstacles you will likely face.

Printing Woes

Re-furbishing your brand may involve seeking suppliers to source your desirable customised packaging. However, a common issue with companies is their misleading perception that customisation is translated into longer lead times, costly and expensive printing offers, and sufficient errors and delays.

To overcome this hurdle, seek packaging suppliers who are local, and are willing to tailor to your specific requirements and the needs. Ask for samples, and identify their experience and capabilities in the packaging processes. To ultimately achieve business success, make sure there is absolute control and visibility of your project. This may include keeping tracking progress of their resources and their status of operation to ensure the end product is achieving high quality of input; thus reducing the potential of error and added setbacks occurring and the ability to make changes easier.

Value Proposition: Unknown

What is 'value proposition'? This is a term that has been thrown around the principles of Marketing for decades and is probably the most important element of your business. Basically; why should the customer buy from you?

A misconception of differentiation and 'creating value' can take in the form of price differentiation – the easier way to strategise against competitors and facilitate a prolonged price war. However, differentiating your cost can only you take you so far, in terms of defining your market success.

Ultimately, the challenge of creating value is: "how are we going to differentiate ourselves so our customer chooses us solely for the value of our brand? How are we going to make them care about our business?"

Driving innovation is key to differentiation but also a difficult one, when attempting to communicate why your business exists. So one good place to start, is with the customer at heart, and demonstrating your immeasurable care for their needs. By building rapport and customer-centric relationships, customers will drive to purchase from you in flocks.

Overcoming the hurdle of communicating value will not happen overnight – it is a long-term strategy and one that can severely impact the outlook for your business. So spend time on solving your customer's pain points. Understand your customers and work on a brand excites customers, and awaken that feel through your packaging.

Design Standardisation

Some may struggle to communicate emotion in messages, however it is a key indicator of packaging success. Standardised packaging does not cater nor interact with consumers; eventually decaying, becoming disposed of and ultimately forgotten about.

Creating and establishing an emotional link with your customers is another form of creating value for your packaging and your brand. Still very much a work in progress, the future of the packaging industry will involve the ability to interact and emotionally-engage customers to further emphasise brand messaging.

To better prepare yourself in a shift of industry, don't be afraid to emphasise expression in your packaging. Be bold and do not hesitate to invest into being creative; this is what makes your brand desirable plus profitable.

Sustainability In Question

Perhaps a common challenge in the business landscape is the challenge of going green. Customers are more favourable to sustainable companies who protect the environment – however it is more than likely that ‘going green’ may prove costlier to demonstrate. Nonetheless, it is important not to overlook the prominence of environmental issues.

Customers express their concern and demand the reduction of environmental impact on packaging; as well as minimising the amount of raw materials used. There is a widespread popularity of incorporating your supply chain management with recycling processes - introducing the challenge of capital expenditure investments. However, implementing process improvements in manufacturing and supply-chain to minimise scrap and reducing the material content can provide significant results to the environment and the perception of your customers.

Conclusion

You want your packaging to be inviting, and interactive in some way to attract customers to your business. We have simplified and outlined four major challenges and solutions to the development and process of optimising your packaging and your brand.

Come and talk to our packaging professionals who know exactly how to help you deliver the best packaging processes. Gispac will help in delivering innovative solutions in your endeavour to escalate the potential of your packaging and minimise packaging obstacles with ease.

Give us a call for a free chat to see how we can unlock your brand potential, starting today.